Dora (Ryo Ryusei) and associates runs a badger game scheme to extort victims out of money. One day though, their target looks like an ordinary guy, but he tuns out to be a yakuza. Dora and his associates fall into a far darker world. Dora steps into a business that offers to take revenge on others by any means necessary.
- http://asianwiki.com/Zebra_%28Japanese_Movie%29

Based on a manga. Directed by Hajime Hashimoto (Flower & Snake: Zero, The Detective Is in the Bar). Opens later this month.

Dora is a lowlife con man who runs a marriage scam with his associates. But a badly timed encounter with a yakuza will plunge Dora into a new, deep world of darkness, both ugly and enticing!

Based on the acclaimed manga series, SHIMAUMA is the story of Dora, a lowlife con who makes his living running a marriage scam with his associates. One day, when a proposed mark turns out to be a yakuza, Dora and his gang find themselves plunging into a world of darkness, via a business which offers to take revenge for their clients on those who harmed them by any means necessary. It’s not long before the vicious beast inside Dora is awakened and he becomes a collector for the mysterious SHIMAUMA.

Landing on the screen like a thousand-pound hammer. SHIMAUMA is a nihilistic, brutal journey into the dark heart of modern day Japan. With lo-fi visuals and an operatic sense of excess, it depicts the marginalized collectors that exist on the lowest rung of Japanese society; an imaginary business which, in its own words, feeds on the excrement that filters through those above.

It’s hard to think of another movie which attacks the viewer with such verve. The journey of Dora, from angry, young scammer to brutal, bitter collector is a highly effective critique of the human condition: brittle, brutal and ready to plunge into animal urges at any given moment. As Dora and his cohorts receive assignment after assignment from the mysterious leader Shimauma, they shed their humanity inch by inch. Their methods are ugly, unorthodox and highly worrying and their aim is singular: to give their victims a fate worse than death which breaks their very desire to exist.

Carefully eschewing cheap shock tactics in favor of lingering, effective brutality, there is also a gorgeous sense of excess and humor present. It may be set in modern day Tokyo, but rather than turning down its comic book characters, this film embraces them to brilliant effect, creating a deadpan ride which terrifies as much as it entertains. This is the kind of film to be debated long after the festival ends and one to miss at your own peril. (Evrim Ersoy)

Despite my deep hatred for most S&M movies, I decided to give this a try.

Holy Motherfucking Shit! This was bloody great.

Flower and Snake: Zero (Japan, 2014) [VoD]
Most SM films run the same old tired formula. There's a proud housewife in a need of some shaming, provided by men who rope discipline her all the way to the morally dubious romantic happy end. Not so here. This one starts with police raid into an underground SM shoot - something that immediately turns into a bloody gunfight, and sets the tone for the rest of the film. It's a deliriously over the top crime film / S&M movie fever dream with an intriguing mystery plot, violence that occasionally slips to the splatter action territory, and one hell of a climax. It's also very erotic, thanks to stylish direction, attractive cast and decent characters (a blackmailed female cop who does karate, an abducted wife, and a cute giggling young woman who discovers she loves S&M). The storyline frequently (unintentionally) borders ridiculous, but that only works to its benefit. The only liability is that none of the cast look very convincing with guns; that being said, the weapons are "real" and the film is a feast in practical effects.

Note: Hong Kong DVD and BD release are apparently cut, but I don't know the details.

HungFist wrote:A friend of mine saw it too, and called it a movie that most resembled Ichi the Killer since Ichi the Killer.

Your friend's assessment is pretty spot-on. There are way too many similarities for it to be a conincidence. In addition to all the torture and sadism, there's even a backstory about school bullying similar to what was explored in Masato Tanno's ICHI THE KILLER prequel 1-ICHI (2003). I enjoyed the film quite a bit and it's once again amazing what they can get away with under an R-15 in Japan these days. Granted, there's not much in the way of sexual violence even if the biggest laugh I got out of the whole film was how one character complains about how the collecting jobs are always about torturing the guy and raping the girl and how boring that is. So on the next job they rape the guy and torture the girl!

There are 14 volumes in the manga series (plus a gaiden volume) so I assume there's room for a sequel or two. We'll see if anything happens but I'd be up for it.

Hajime Hashimoto is an interesting director based on his few films so far. I saw his PHONE CALL TO THE BAR a few weeks ago and it's a slick mainstream detective/crime flick. I still need to check out FLOWER AND SNAKE: ZERO.

I watched FLOWER AND SNAKE: ZERO and am in total agreement: It's pretty goddamn great! While pretty much all S&M flicks are total borefests this one is different because it places its thriller/police procedural plot first and treats the S&M stuff as window dressing. Also, all the characters are wonderfully weird and interesting, which is in strong contrast to the yawn-inducing cliches which HungFist summed up perfectly above:

There's a proud housewife in a need of some shaming, provided by men who rope discipline her all the way to the morally dubious romantic happy end.

None of that shit here!

Daikichi Sugawara stole the film for me as MC Kurokawa. Also Yuichi Kimura as Japanese Ice Cube. And yes, there are women in it also and they do lewd stuff.

I saw Shimauma, and while I kind of liked it, I was expecting a bit more.

Performances are fine, there are some great moments of black humour, and there is something strangely captivating about the film. However, I thought the violence got a little tiresome towards the end, and the film could've been a little shorter. Compared to Flower and Snake: Zero, this is certainly the less stylish of the two.

The fact that is got an R15-rating in Japan really is a miracle, and not a small one.

HK censors cut both ICHI THE KILLER and FLOWER AND SNAKE: ZERO. SHIMAUMA falls somewhere in between in the sex & violence department and as such I'd be really surprised if it escaped the censor's scissors unscathed.